|  | Author: Dave Cullen
Publisher: Twelve
List Price: $26.99
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Seller: Gulfstream Goodwill
Rating:  238 reviews
Sales Rank: 12854
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0446546933
Dewey Decimal Number: 373.7888
EAN: 9780446546935
ASIN: 0446546933
Publication Date: April 6, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Minor shelf wear. Cover has light bends or dings. Your purchase supports people with disabilities. Thank you.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 201-205 of 238
 This clears up a lot of things I have heard, but not sure about April 21, 2009
Lucille Sikes (LOUISVILLE, KY USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I remember watching this on television. It was all so disturbing. Over time, a lot of rumors were started (trench coat mafia did it, they wanted to kill certain people, etc). I also wondered about the parents of the boys. The media only made all this worse.
I am glad that this book has helped clear this up. I hope that we continue to learn from this terrible experience and i pray for the families that were affected (including those of the shooters)
 Too many errors April 21, 2009
Jeannette F.
31 out of 64 found this review helpful
There are some serious factual errors in Cullen's newest Columbine book.
Cullen claims that Eric and Dylan were popular, and that Eric bagged as many girls as anyone on the football team. Number one, Cullen gives no attribution for this in the actual text or in the endnotes. Number two, everything we know about Eric flies in the face of this.
Eric couldn't get a date to the senior prom. The one person who has stepped forward to say she had sex with Eric is Brenda Parker, who Cullen approvingly quotes. But take a look at her interview with police. She says she met Eric and Dylan when she was with a friend, but doesn't know the friend's last name. She says she had sex with Eric twice, but claims she did not remember any scars or birthmarks because it was dark. She didn't know if he had a pierced ear.
Then her story really starts to fall apart. Parker claims she met Eric in January 1998 and hung out with him until fall of 1998. But only then, she says, did she realize he was in high school (Parker would have been 23 at that point). Not credible.
But wait, there's more. The cops then busted Parker for claiming on the internet she was in on the Columbine plot. They didn't arrest her or anything, but said she shouldn't go around talking like that when it didn't occur. There is also an interesting discussion about some other alleged falsifications Parker did on the Super Columbine Massacre discussion forum. Sorry, Mr. Cullen, Brenda Parker is not a valid source.
Cullen's focus on the psychology of Eric and Dylan also excuses the police (and everyone else) of any wrongdoing. It's like no one could have done anything to stop the killers, they were just "crazy." Cullen then excuses his favorite police source, Kate Battan, the lead Columbine investigator. Cullen says she was "clean" and did not participate in any of the police cover-ups. But as the lead investigator, Battan must have known the Browns had met with police investigators a year before Columbine, which the police denied. (By the way, this post is not meant to support Randy Brown, who has also posted against Cullen. It's just near impossible to talk about Columbine without talking about the Browns).
As for the myth-busting, look at the Denver Post. On May 7, 1999 the Post reported that Bernall and Valeen Schnurr both said "yes" that they believed in God before being shot. The Post and Rocky Mountain News continued to raise questions about what Bernall said. Cullen coming out ten years later to tell us that is tardy myth-busting at best.
This author has to credentials to make these claims April 20, 2009
15 out of 52 found this review helpful
Cullen claims to have been there from the start but he wasn't the beginning was the first time these two boys were bullied. The author claims they weren't bullied but in "Bowling for Columbine" the students said they were Harris and Klebold were subjected to a lot of bullying.
Cullen doesn't understand what bullying is and obviously did no research he only objective is to sell a sensational story to gullible people who want nothing better than to be relived of the guilt of past acts of bullying and to be able to say that nothing could have been done to prevent this.
Hard To Read, Harder To Put Down April 20, 2009
Not Usually Hard To Please
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
It is very hard to look so unblinkingly at pure, unadulterated evil. Dave Cullen does that, and brings the reader along for the ride.
This is by no means an easy book to read. After ten years, someone would assume s/he would know this story very well, and by the end of the book, s/he would know that s/he was wrong.
Mr. Cullen's account is impeccably researched, fair in its judgments, and finely written. But it is not easy to read.
 A great read but not the whole story. April 19, 2009
Ariel Pawlak (POMPANO BEACH, FL United States)
11 out of 15 found this review helpful
I really liked this book and could not put it down, however after I finished I was left with more questions than when I started. I always felt sympathy towards everyone in this tragedy, even the killers. This book puts forth a seemingly valid hypothesis for why the boys killed, Eric was a psychopath and Dylan was a follower. In fact the author seems to give Dylan a free pass. Dylan sought truth and beauty, Dylan was not committed to the plan, Dylan was obsessed with love, etc. According to the author, Dylan tried to stop Eric but throwing out hints of what was to come to his teacher and Brooks Brown. If he really wanted to stop Eric, he only had to go down to the principal's office and tell them what he knew. The author even went so far as to point out that Dylan only fired into empty classrooms and shot his weapons many times less than Harris. Upon further research on the web I discovered that Dylan killed as many people in the library as Eric Harris. He certainly comes across as committed to murder by his comments made in the library. Both of the killers taunted people and had equal participation in the murders in the library. This was not made clear in the book. There is no mention of how the victims were individually shot or by whom. A very glaring omission I think when you are trying to lay out why the killers did what they did. This book actually made me feel sorry for Dylan because the author made it seem that if not for meeting Eric Harris he would have only eventually harmed himself because he was suicidal. I don't buy that. I actually have less sympathy for Dylan now.
Speaking of the victims, many are entirely left out of this book except for the dedication to them on the first page. I would have liked to have known something about each of them. For some reason the author only chose to focus on Danny, a student who was killed, Dave Sanders, the teacher who was killed and Patrick who was injured. What about all of the other victims who don't even merit a mention by the author?
My biggest complaint about the book is that the author does not crack the biggest enigma in this whole story, the parents. Only the Klebolds have spoken out and that has been very limited. The author seems to indicate that everyone feels they are behaving honorable. After reading this book I don't think that they have begun to accept the blame due them. They clearly did not know enough about what their sons activities were and are to be faulted for that. When Dylan proved untrustworthy there should have been regular inspections of his room,car, and computer. This might have saved lives. Even today they refer to the event as a suicide not as murders. They had blinders on. The Harris family refuses to say anything. Until their interviews are unsealed in twenty something years the whole story cannot be known. The parents have provided an explanation to the victims but the rest of us are left to wonder what exactly it is. Eric's dad comes off especially badly in this book. He seems to adopt the attitude that previous complaints about his son, especially by the Brown's, were over emphasized and that he knew best how to deal with Eric. The classic my child has really done anything wrong and I know him best so back off. Some parents cannot accept any criticism of their chils and he comes off as one of them.
I am also left wondering what happened to Robyn, Dylan's friend who supplied the guns with the boys money? If not for her, the bombs would have fizzled out and if the boys didn't have guns no one would have been killed. No mention is made of what if any punishment was dealt out to her. I believe she share a large responsibility in this tragedy.
Some things I think the author did a good job with is explaining and dubunking the Casey Bernell myth, she said yes. The boys appear to have not been bullied and in fact were the aggressors. They were popular and from stable homes, not what you would expect from someone capable of such a crime. I also agree with the assessment of Eric psychopathy. There were many warning signs and the sheriff's office completely dropped the ball. There was a cover up which has now been exposed by the author. Dave Sanders is perhaps the saddest story of all. He heroically put himself in danger to save students lives and he was thanked by having help purposefully kept from him as he bled to death. I hope is daughter gets every penny due to her. I hope the families involved in this can find some peace. We need to learn from the mistakes made a Columbine to prevent the past from being repeated.
Showing reviews 201-205 of 238
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